In order to get your life under control, it is essential to create a plan. A daily routine is essential to keep each day progressing, and create a foundation that will support a larger plan. Plans with corresponding goals, will help you stay motivated and on track to achieve what you desire. By understanding the basics of how to plan, you can ensure success, both personally and professionally.
Your plan could be to learn a new skill, to advance in your career, or to improve the relationships in your life. Alternatively, you could also create a plan for emergencies. In this latter category, by having a plan in place, you will find you can get through those unexpected challenges in a better way if you are ever faced with one. Being evacuated from your home, being quarantined, having a medical issue flare up, all can be planned for to mitigate the outcome. By planning for emergencies, you mitigate stress associated with unknowns in life. By planning for improvements or dreams, you set yourself up for success and happiness.
This article will focus primarily on the positive planning, but the same principles can be used for emergency planning. I recommend you consider having an emergency plan for your household. A little time invested one weekend to figure out contingencies can go a long way in a time of need. Packing a go bag, having a stocked pantry, having a list of emergency contacts readily available are all a small investment for the return if you ever need to cash it in.
Introspection
Before you jump into making a plan, you need to figure out what isn’t working in your life. Sometimes this is harder than you think to identify. If you feel like something is off, it most likely is. Other times, we set a goal, and we are working frantically to achieve it, but it is no longer relevant. So what’s the point?
You’re doing a program in University because it’s what your guidance counsellor recommended you’d be a great fit for, but all you want to do is a trade. Why waste valuable time and money if your heart is not in it. Now if you can see yourself doing it as a backup career, by all means continue. But if it means that you will be miserable for the rest of your life, cut your losses earlier rather than later. Staying in a relationship that isn’t working because you have already invested too many years together is not reason enough to stay. But don’t leave abruptly without reviewing what is happening, it may just need a slight tweak.
Once you know what isn’t working, you need to figure out what your values are. Not what you want people to think, but what do you intrinsically value in life. Respect? Free time? Money? Satisfaction of doing hard work? Relationships? What is it that you cannot be without in life. Do you have it? And if not, how can you get it? If the relationships you are in, be they work or personal, don’t satisfy this need for value, why do you stay? If you value respect and your boss has no idea what respect is, then why put yourself through it?
Moving Forward
Before you start throwing ideas out there, think of why you are doing this plan. If it’s simply because you think you need to, that’s not good enough. You need to understand that by creating a plan, it helps you not only identify what you are aiming for more clearly, but also how to get there. Baby steps is how I live my life, but each step is working towards something bigger. By breaking things down, it makes them digestible. It ensures you not only can move forward, but also helps you have little wins along the way, reinforcing your bigger goal.
In order to start your plan, I often think of what do I want to achieve in the end. Dream big! You want to learn a new language? Aiming for a promotion? Longing to go on a dream vacation? Want to make the team this year? Once you start working on it, you may need to adjust it. But by looking at a basic goal-planning methodology, you can increase your chances of success.
Tools To Plan
Make sure you set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Once your goals are identified, figure out how to achieve them. Break it down into manageable tasks that can be accomplished. How will you measure this? Is it doing a certain task “X” number of times per week? Finding some way to quantify your plan can be challenging for certain goals. Forcing yourself to look at it from all angles, will shed light on the goal in a different way. Visit Using Self-Reflection for Goal Setting for more details on SMART goals.
Keeping lists that you can check off the smaller components can give you a sense of accomplishment along the way. Tie your actions you’ve identified in the previous step into a timeline. Some things can be done daily, others will have to be scheduled for a particular date to keep you on track. But ensure you block time specifically for your goals and incorporate it into your routine. Review you plan regularly and adjust as needed.
Once you accomplish your goal, celebrate your achievement. Whether that be sharing with a friend, going for dinner with your family, or simply writing it down so you can have a visual representation of what you did. The fact that you take a little bit of time to feel good about your accomplishment will go a long way. File the accomplishment in your accomplishments folder/box where you keep all of your wins. On a day when you feel you are not getting anywhere, look at these contents and it will help you stay positively focused. By reviewing your prior accomplishments, you remind yourself that you can tackle challenges big and small.
What’s your plan?
The next step once you’ve celebrated, is to set your next goal. Things may have changed in your life since the last time you made your plan, so I recommend you repeat the cycle. Review where you are, figure out where you want to go, and break it down into manageable steps. This becomes a lifelong tool that you need to incorporate. At times you may need a little help on some elements, but build structures for yourself that allow you to excel. If you don’t meet a goal, it’s also okay. Regular review and adjustments are par for the course.
What does matter, is that you always have yourself top of mind. Don’t lose sight of how you can make your life better, no one else will do it for you. Being in control of your life is empowering, and it will feed into different aspects and relationships of your day-to-day.
IMAGE CREDIT: Unsplash | Brett Jordan.